"if you think childlike, you'll stay young. If you keep your energy going, and do everything with a little flair, you're gunna stay young. But most people do things without energy, and they atrophy their mind as well as their body. you have to think young, you have to laugh a lot, and you have to have good feelings for everyone in the world, because if you don't, it's going to come inside, your own poison, and it's over" Jerry Lewis
"I don’t believe
in the irreversibility of situations" Deleuze

Note on Citations

The numerical citations refer to page number. The source's text-space (including footnote region) is divided into four equal portions, a, b, c, d. If the citation is found in one such section, then for example it would be cited p.15c. If the cited text lies at a boundary, then it would be for example p.16cd. If it spans from one section to another, it is rendered either for example p.15a.d or p.15a-d. If it goes from a 'd' section and/or arrives at an 'a' section, the letters are omitted: p.15-16.

Carmelo Bene’s Romeo and Juliet critiques Shakespeare. Deleuze wonders what is theatre’s critical function, and how we are to understand the relation between the original play and its critical adaptation.

(87bc/201c) [Citations give French version first, then the English translation.]

Bene subtracts elements from Shakespeare’s plays. He “amputates” some critical element. He removes from Hamlet the title character, and thereby

the whole play, because it now lacks a part chosen nonarbitrarily, will perhaps tip over, turn around on itself, land on another side. If you amputate Romeo, you will witness an astonishing development, that of Mercutio, who was no more than a potentiality [virtualité] in Shakespeare’s play.

[In drama, forces push-and-pull the narrative development in many directions. Events could go one way, dramatic changes pull it another. A character expects one outcome, but fate deals the dramatic opposite. There is a complex play of forces waged between characters and gods. Like threads of a web, removing one part unravels the network of influence-relations, thereby producing a wholly different story. The forces pushing-and-pulling a character one way are virtualities, because she really is tending implicitly in some way or another. This is dramatic intensity: a quantity of force pulling the character or events in one direction. But then, other forces intervene. The gods spoil men’s devices. Intrigue fells swiftly whole royal families. But if we remove that force of fate or the character’s influence, what was previously an unactualized virtuality now becomes realize. That is to say, the character who was thwarted from tending one way will actually go that way when we remove the thwarting force. So in the first case, the virtually-real in-tending did not actualize, because forces pulled events another way. But when we remove those interfering forces, events will go that way. That prior implicit intensity will extend explicitly into the dramatic states of affairs.] So when we amputate Romeo, Mercutio’s fate changes dramatically.

Mercutio dies quickly in Shakespeare, but in CB he does not want to die, cannot die, does not succeed in dying, since he will constitute the new play.

The theatrical creator is author, actor, and director. And although Bene performs these functions, they are not his critical functions. Bene critiques through surgically-precise excisions.

By operation, one must understand the activity of subtraction, of amputation, but already masked by another activity which gives birth to and multiplies the unexpected, as in a prosthesis: amputation of Romeo and immense development of Mercutio, the one within the other. This is a theater of surgical precision.

[Mercutio plays a greater role when Romeo’s influence is removed. This greater role was already there in the original form, but just there intensively, as a virtuality. Bene does not give Mercutio something he lacked before. Rather, he changes the way Mercutio expresses his forces. When Romeo is removed, some of Mercutios forces are expressed more explicitly.]

So Bene’s critically modifies original texts neither to make parody nor to “add literature to literature.” He subtracts something explicit in the text to bring out something implicit. He raises the text to a higher dimension of expression.

This is a theater-experimentation that involves more love for Shakespeare than all the commentaries.

For example, in S.A.D.E, the master is paralyzed, allowing the masochistic slave to seek and develop his identity. He thereby “constitutes himself on the stage according to the inadequacies and impotencies of the master.” (89d/205c)

The slave is not at all the reverse image of the master, nor his replica nor his contradictory identity: he constitutes himself piece by piece, morsel by morsel, through the neutralization of the master; he gains his autonomy through the master’s amputation.

Deleuze notes that Shakespeare’s Richard the Third is his only play where the women “do battle for themselves” (ont pour leur compte des rapports de guerre) (205d/90bc). And according to Shakespeare, the title character has a “secret goal” that has little to do with obtaining his own power. Deleuze writes that Richard wants to

reintroduce or reinvent a war-machine, even if it means destroying the apparent equilibrium or the peace of the State.

And Bene himself plays these title characters, but his role is not merely acting. For, he is the controller, mechanic, or operator of the character’s constitution.

(206c)

Although Bene makes cultural commentary in his plays, they are not primarily critiques of societies. To uncover the real critique, we must determine Bene’s subtractions. In Romeo, S.A.D.E, and Richard, he subtracts the essential elements and symbols of power systems. (93b/206-207)

The theatre’s power is much like the State’s power: both are obtained by the coherence of representation. When theatre represents coherently, it attains power; it is a powerful play. So when the theatre represents the coherence of State power, it attains its own power no less. So even if Bene critically represents the coherence of State power, his play itself becomes more powerful.

But if Bene attains power by representing it critically, he has not attained the highest critique. So Bene instead amputates the play’s representative power. By removing the depicted State power’s representative coherence, his play itself loses power. But it also frees the actors, no longer bound by commitments to consistency. [Richard virtually did not want to kill off his competitors for the throne. His in-tending was to actualize his forces of self-creation, to be who he would be without their power systems’ coherence inhibiting his virtualities from actualizing.]

So when Bene depicts a play revolving largely around power relations, but subtracts essential elements of that representation, he also changes the form of theatre. He makes it unrepresentative. Other theatrical creators are doing so too, but Bene in his own unique way. By subtracting the stable components of power, he releases a nonrepresentational force set always in disequilibrium. (94c/207c)